The "site" is vulnerable? Isn't the problem that Americans are vulnerable to influence campaigns?
How about the root of the actual problem: that the voting populous is trained to absorb information without questioning its authenticity or accuracy. It's more convenient to hear something you agree with and believe it is true, so this is the general way that folks "become informed." Now this strategy of "becoming informed" is biting us in the ass, and the plan is to play this cat/mouse game with questionable sources of information rather than try to tackle the actual problem?
I don't think anyone is arguing that a Russian with a personal interest in American politics is barred from discussing a US election.
That is called the First Amendment. The fact that others in the world discuss US politics is not a problem.
The deplorable state of US politics is the problem.
No citizen of the US needs to be protected.
We will find when politicians better represent Americans, not big money, no protection is needed.
Same goes for media. When do you see a solid discussion of net neutrality presented in the mainstream media, or an economic story told from the labor point of view? Two super easy examples.
People go seeking elsewhere, and with all of that comes these worries over people actually discussing policy!
Shocker. It's as if having a real conversation is a threat somehow.
Perhaps it is. Perhaps it should be.
...what?
US Citizens are allowed to hear opinions of others when engaging in political discussion. That's why it's called a discussion. If you "protect" them, because the opinion they are hearing might be from a boilerroom overseas or more likely, a DNC or RNC funded organization here in the US, you are almost certainly going to swing the pendulum too far and end up doing far more destruction to the democratic process than those you started off "protecting" us from.
Look at Facebook's use of snopes.com as their "fact checkers". We now know that snopes.com is extremely politically biased.
People who say they are protecting you from something are usually victimizing you instead. Please don't protect me.
Do we know that? Really? Or do "we" mean "it seems to me that Snopes.com is debunking reports from my side of the political aisle more than they are from the other side, therefore Snopes.com is extremely politically biased?" Because even if that initial premise is true, "Snopes is unfair to my side" is not the only possible explanation.
You really should not be delegating these things to Snopes without having a robust check in place.
Do we? Or have you just disagreed with them?
In my primary education, early 80's era, we learned all about propaganda. I remember those few days very well as they were eye opening!
We studied the 7 basic forms in the context of advertising. Everyone found samples of each, and created an ad centered on a favorite of the forms. Once that made sense, there was some additional discussion on propaganda aimed at citizens, with samples and discussion.
My own kids, did not get this, and a lot of other basic and important civics related education. Of course, I did it, and did it the same basic way I experienced the topic, and the results were similar.
The First Amendment does not contain a shield. This means a few things many Americans are struggling with right now, and I believe that struggling centers on the lack of civics education and a cultivation of victim culture related to news / media / opinion consumption / discussion.
The answer to free speech we don't like is more free speech!
Let them put propaganda here. When we educate our people, and our press is functional (right now it's not very functional, being largely access journalism), propaganda won't be all that effective. Never is.
Ask yourself, why did we quit basic education on these things?
I'm generally not a conspiracy theorist, but it sure seems that having a populace without strong critical thinking skills, and without formal training to recognize propaganda (and marketing) plays into the hands of the elite* by allowing them to maintain and expand their hold on the economy and government.
*noblemen might be more appropriate here than Bourgeoisie, even the 1% term is fairly inaccurate because its more like .01%.
Nobleman are the land-bound pre-capitalist elite; other than a handful tolerated for symbolic purposes, those that remain elites have done so by joining the capitalist elite, the bourgeoisie. So, no, bourgeoisie is the more accurate term.
Do you think the issue might be a little more nuanced than that?
Why are we not talking about the Democratic primary rigging? Seems like that's a subject that even liberals should like to talk about (at least half of them), but again, it's Russia Russia Russia.
Seems like there are some folks who would rather change the subject to Russia Russia Russia.
The fact that you think this is the result of Russian propaganda, because it works.
No vote tampering or anything to that level. But the emails show how embedded the party leadership is with the media and how much they can use their influence. I believe pushing the superdelegate count everyday for months before even the first primary is one of the worst things I've seen.
Giving out true information is not propaganda, its journalism.
Hard to wage a campaign against intellectually lazy voters.
There are a number of steps that our country could take towards having elections that require or at least strongly encourage more informed voting. I think a solid first step would be stripping all party affiliations from the ballots. If you want to vote for only one party blindly, that's fine, but you are going to need to memorize the name of the Democrat running for the school board then.
Other/alternative steps include switching to STV or Ranked Choice voting, and anything that discourages a duopoly in political parties, such as mixed member proportional representation and perhaps even making the president an appointed position. Some of that is pretty out there though.
The problem is the electorate. No one likes Congress, but everyone who voted voted for someone in Congress.
Most people like their congressman, even while hating congress in general. There are 432 of them in the house, you vote for exactly one of them (assuming you are not committing fraud). In Red states the majority likes the republicans in congress and hate the democrats, in blue states the majority likes the democrats and hate the republicans.